Dark Thoughts

Today I learned that one of the greats of the synthesizer industry passed away of brain cancer. Bob Moog's contribution to the electronic music industry can not be understated. The humble Minimoog is still a cult classic today, more than 30 years after it's release. When people compare filters available in today's synthesizer's they invariably compared to the filter's available in that little beast. Without the contributions of Bob Moog the music being produced today simply wouldn't be possible. Techno would never have happened and sythesizer's would still be making rude beeps without those characteristic filter slide's.

Rest in peace, Bob. I never met you personally, and have only had the priveledge of getting my hands on an MG1 and a Mini a few times, but you will be remembered.

My weekly weigh in has seen me back up to 100.5 kg's, though my week saw me as low as 99.5 kg's. The scales are those dodgy digital types, and Jodie has complained about them on occasion, so I will soon be investing in a new set with one of those analog dials. Exercise is becoming part of our routine now, which is good, and we are up to 1 hour 10 minutes per session now, which we feel is good. Jodie is going to see a nutritionist next week as part of a holistic treatment for something completely unrelated, but I'm working with her, and we are both keeping the eating and exercise diary.

I've just finished the LD 120 Roborapper Remix of Disconnected, by Perth hip hop band, The Freakz of the Nature. I amped the tempo up a bit and tranced it down and even managed to find a robo-rapper for them :P The plan is to put together a remix compilation of different Freakz tracks at some stage.

I'm ready to get back into making some of my own tunes now. I've got the studio running pretty smoothly now, with a new Firewire card and a Steinberg Midex8 MIDI interface. The Midex8 is definately a stepdown from the 8PortSE, and I'm having some very wierd latency issues with the new hardware, which definately shouldn't be there. These are causing me to line up audio the same as we used to on samplers (gawd I'm glad I've still got some old skool skills). Not a major drama, but a bit of a pain that does interrupt my workflow a little. Steinberg are gearing up to release a new update to Cubase which should solve some of the problems, and Yamaha are apparently working on a new driver which should improve the latency issue.

I'm still getting the occasional Wordclock error, but it's almost like mLAN is syncing to the wrong part of the wordclock message. It's pretty good for most of the time, but it will loose a sample every now and then. I can hear this when there are some phasing issues between two different parts of the same sound file. I'm sure it will get fixed eventually, but it is frustrating at the moment.

I'm waiting on my tax return at the moment, and may well buy a new piece of gear that I've been lusting after for a few years. That being a SPL Mk2T. It will give a professional polish, a coating of fairy dust, to all of my recordings, in a way that only expensive high quality gear can.

Anyway, all else is well. I'm continuing the work on the house and am trying to get a little more done every week.

Jodie did a fantastic drawing this weekend of a Kimberly landscape that I simply love. I'm going to get it framed and put it up in my office. I really, really like it, even though it's not quite finished. Jodie's not 100% happy with it, but at least she hasn't torn this one in half, which is the unfortunate fate of many of her drawings that she considers below standard.

Anyway, I've got to get back to work...

Just a quick blog entry today.

Weight is down to 100kg. It's going down slowly, but is up and down a bit. I don't think the occasional pizza is helping much, and I've instructed Jodie to keep pizza's away from me.

In other news the remix of Disconnected for is nearly finished. We've tranced up this trio from Perth. mLAN is working well again with a new MIDI interface and a new firewire card.

It was Jodie's Birthday on Saturday and we went on a balloon ride, which was seriously good fun. I got lots of photo's and if my new website ever gets going, then I'll post some photo's.

That's it for today. I've got to leave work shortly to pick up my beloved and head off to the gym for a bit of sweating.

Until next time.

Today has been a right shocker for me. I'll start the story where it began, yesterday.

Jodie and I were invited to a picnic at the picturesque Araluen Gardens, south of the Perth metro area. We agree to go, though yesterday morning when it was time to be there, Jodie was still enjoying her night's sleep. Not wanting to push her into getting out of bed, I set out on my own, as I'd said that I would go. I'd never been to Araluen before and was relying on my roadmap to get me there, though when I pulled into the carpark at Araluen and looked at my phone I found that there was no mobile phone signal. Not to worry I thought, because I'd told Jodie that I would be gone for a few hours, and didn't know exactly when I would get back.

Anyway, the picnic was relaxing and enjoyable, and the day was fantastic. I got back into my car about 3 and a half hours later to drive home to my dearly beloved. About 10 minutes up the road my phone starts beeping with messages. The first asking what I'm up to. The second was a missed phone call from Jodie but there was no message left. The third made me quite angry "Fine, be an arsehole". OK. I'm an arsehole because I was on a picnic with my sister and some friends that Jodie was invited to but didn't want to come on, and because the picnic was out of phone range so I couldn't respond to the message.

I was fuming and had calmed only a little by the time I got home. I copied my photo's onto the laptop, grabbed a drink of water and went to bed to try to relax a little. Half an hour of fitful snoozing and I had calmed somewhat and went back into the house to enjoy my night with Jodie. I showed her the photo's I had taken and she seemed to like some of the closeup shots of the tulips. I left her browsing the photo's and returned to the living room to watch a bit of TV and unwind some more. Jodie returned a little later and we watched some TV before I made a curry. We had a shower and went to bed.

During our shower, Jodie told me that she'd sent me an email and hinted that I might be upset by it. I was starting to ponder this and was wondering what she'd send to me in an email that she didn't want to talk to me about.

Once we were in bed we got to talking about my friends that I had in Perth. I don't have that many that I actually catch up with these days and I talked to her about them for a bit. She asked me about a few people that I'd received emails recently. One is a workmate from Turkey who I've worked with on and off for about 6 or 7 years, and who was due to be in China about the same time my next trip was going to be. The other was a girl who I've known for many years and who had sent out a broadcast email about her new email address. The language of the email was interesting and referred to the adressee as "tiger" and signed off with Love Name -xx-. I can see that this is language that could be construed as suggestive, but that's not really the issue here. The big issue is that the said email was sent to a lot of email addresses using the BCC field, which hides recipient names. There was one email address in the To field.

Jodie had opened my email program and found this email while going through my computer and assumed that the email address in the To field was some sort of hidden email account of mine and sent off an email to it. I can see how this may have looked, but the email address wasn't mine and was simply one of the addresses on the broadcast list of my friend. Needless to say I never received the email and told Jodie as much when she emailed me this morning asking if I'd received her email.

Anyway, I sent her an email outlining all of my various email addresses and with a bit of an explanation about how BCC fields work as well as a copy of the headers showing a To field and an empty BCC field. Jodie admitted that she sent off the email when she was angry but that she didn't regret it because if I was cheating on her then she wanted me to know that she'd found out, but she did seem to acknowledge that perhaps the strange email address wasn't mine.

I tried to tell her that I wan't particularly happy at being called an arsehole (the reason I was angry the previous evening, which was why Jodie didn't feel that she could approach me.) or being accused of cheating on her. Anyway terse words were exchanged for quite some time before I did something, which in hind sight was really really dumb. I did an internet search for "jealous girlfriend" in the hopes of finding something about how to tell someone that you cared about, but thought was a little too jealous, that they were too jealous. Anyway, to cut a long story short I ended up sending a link to this page. I wanted to get the point accross that I felt that accusing me of being unfaithful and going through my phone and email was something that I felt uncomfortable about.

I don't mind Jodie going through my phone and email normally. I don't have anything to hide, but when something like this is interpreted incorrectly and she starts sending off emails to random email addresses, it does make me feel uncomfortable. I don't want her to start sending threatening letters to my friends or anything, so I thought I should say something about it. Well, perhaps I should have said something, but I definately shouldn't have sent that link.

My afternoon has been filled with expletive filled emails filling my inbox as I try to explain why I felt I needed to say something.

I'm left feeling unsure of our future together, because of this one thing. Jodie is angry and has indicated that she's not sure if she want's to stay with me. I feel terrible about all of this. I feel as though I've caused all of this, but I know that I'm not solely to blame. Maybe I am, I don't know.

What I do know is that I'm feeling a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach at the thought of loosing Jodie, especially over something like this. It would have been a different matter if I had been cheating on her, but the fact is that I'm deeply in love with her and couldn't even consider seeing another woman. I am dedicated to her, but still I feel like I've fallen from grace and become the villain in all of this. I'm a bit lost on what to do, or how to respond. I sent her an email a while back that I was refraining from saying anything else because everything I try to say or explain seems to make her angrier. I feel like I should say something, but I'm afraid that it will be misinterpreted and fuel her anger.

I don't like feeling this way.

I found the world's worst phone menu system this morning. I rang a music equipment distributed (or should that be attempted to ring) to buy a piece of gear. I got on to their phone system to be greeted by a phone menu. Well - fair enough, I pressed the selection that was closest to what I wanted (sales) to be greeted by another menu with a more cryptic menu. I selected the area of equipment that I wanted to buy, to be greeted by yet another menu about my affiliation to the company (well I was new to the company so I selected the "I'm not an official reseller" option, to be taken to another menu that directed me to a range of support options for various software. Selecting the next one I got an automated voice telling me that they don't do phone support for the gear I'm trying to buy, and instead I need to email them via their website.

Well, I'd resorted to calling, because my two emails telling them that I have cash and want to buy their equipment have gone unanswered.

So my call to talk to the salesman (who's name I have) resulted in me getting routed through their electronic phone system and redirected to a website, and email that is apparently ignored.

If someone wanted something guaranteed to screen calls, then they could do a lot worse than this system to keep people out.

How can a company expect to conduct business when it's soooooo damn hard for someone to buy stuff from them. I thought the whole idea of sales was to make it easier for the customer to give you money.

Anyway, I'll wait to see if these guys ever get back to me...

Podcasting is this new fad sweeping the net that makes on demand radio essentially. What you do is upload an mp3 and an RSS compliant XML file that is handled by a podcast aggregator that checks for updates periodically and automatically downloads them. It's a bit like blogging, except with audio. My favourite podcast is Industrial Radio with some great music and some great humour. I like the presenter and the way that he's down to earth about the things that break down and glitch up. It's a really human experience. I can empathise with him, but he keeps moving forward and making podcasts.

I'll likely set one up for LD120 and LOST as soon as my webspace is live.

Anyway, I've got a busy afternoon ahead of me, and need to get into some serious powerpointing, so until next time....

Well, it's weigh in time again.

I'm down to 100.0 kg, so still heading in the right direction. Jodie and I joined a gym this week, and had one workout before getting sick again and spending most of the rest of the week recovering. We're planning on another workout tonight, and for the rest of the week, now that we are feeling a bit better. The weekend came at a good time, because it allowed us the chance to get the rest that was required. I also managed to spend half a day doing some more gardening and have finished with the cooch in the back yard. I'm in the process of spreading sand in preparation for the paving.

Sunday was my nieces 4th birthday party, so Jodie and I attended, supervised the fairy bread distribution and had a pretty mellow and fun afternoon, before heading off to the movies. We saw The Island last night. Not a bad movie. Lots of action, though it was quite reminiscent of Logan's Run, I felt, though the focus has shifted from a fear of overpopulation, to the cloning debate. This is much, much slicker than Logan's Run, though the old skool feel of the older movie is one of it's attracting features.

In other news, I've been continuing to diagnose problems with my mLAN setup. It seems that Microsoft have kind of killed the parallel port support with Win XP Service Pack 2, and the Quatech Parallel Port card for my Laptop has been causing me no end of drama's. As soon as I insert it, mLAN dies, and I get some very nasty Cubase crashes. I tried Cubase last night, without the card, and while I still got the occasional glitch, I did have continuous audio and could probably work under those conditions without too much of a problem. I'm going to try to return the parallel port card because of the incompatibility problems, and instead buy a new MIDI interface, that runs off the USB buss.

That should provide some measure of future proofing. I'll pick up an adaptec PCMCIA firewire card as well, which should improve the glitching problems I've been experiencing with mLAN.

Hopefully then, I can get back to some music, rather than trying to solve computer problems.

I got my latest travelling itenerary today as well, and, well, it's caused some friction.

Jodie wants to travel, which is cool, and my company requires me to travel for business. Jodie resents that I need to travel, and she has to stay home, and I feel like I'm being torn. On the one hand I want Jodie to be with me while I'm away, but the reality of these business trips is that there would be precious little time that we could spend together. I can see a situation where I'm being resented for having to go to meetings, and for not spending the time with Jodie in a foreign country that she deserves. It's a no win situation and it leaves both Jodie and I feeling pretty bad. I feel a lot of sympathy for Jodie, and I realize that she hasn't experienced being in a foreign land and having long, demanding days of travel and meetings. To her it seems like business travel is a bit of a lark, and something pretty mellow and relaxing, which is a common misconception, I feel.

If you talk to most frequent, international business travellers, the story is universally the same. The travel, living out of a suitcase, in a strange land, long days, intense meetings and busy schedules, really do take their toll on you. It's mentally exhausting. I try to explain this to Jodie, but I honestly don't think that she understands.

What I am most afraid of, is that I take her on a trip where I'm expected to be at continuous meetings and have mine visits for days on end and where she is left in a hotel room to fend for herself. If it were me in this situation, I would hate it. I would feel like I had been abandoned. It would be difficult to be in contact with her during the day, because I would be in a meeting, that requires my full attention, so having a long conversation on the phone during the day, is pretty much out of the question. I would much rather travel with her somewhere, where we both have time off, and where we can actually enjoy the trip. We can take our time to see the place, to immerse ourselves in the culture, and experience the destination together. This is my intention.

I'm really not sure what to do. I'm happy to take Jodie with me on my business trips, but I honestly don't think that it would be an enjoyable experience. I don't enjoy business trips much at the best of times, and at the end of a day just want to sleep. This would be the only time I would get to see Jodie, and I think that my desire to sleep and rest, rather than getting out and experiencing the place would be seen as a stifling influence on Jodie's trip. I don't want this.

I want us both to enjoy the experience and to enjoy getting out and about. I'm not sure how to get this accross to Jodie. I don't know how to explain to her that I would love to share the experience of being overseas with her, but that business trips are extremely busy times for me.

I wish I knew best how to balance the demands placed on me. I want to take Jodie with me when I travel, but I feel that she wouldn't enjoy it, especially as her first experience overseas. It can be frightening going through customs and into a foreign land for the first time, where you don't know what to expect. Sometimes I feel that we could have a great time, but other times I feel that it may be a little overwhelming for her, and I'd be caught in a dilemma where I'd want to stay by her side but be required to be at a meeting, which is the purpose for my travel.

I'd certainly like her to accompany me at some stage. If she enjoy's it, then that would be great, but I suspect that she'd find such business trips as draining as I would. I certainly like her to experience foreign cultures and places, but to do so in the best way, which is where I can dedicate my time to her, and the shared experience, especially on her first few trips, while she gets comfortable with the whole international travel thing. Once she's found her feet, then I'd like to take every opportunity to introduce her to new places, and I could be confident that she will enjoy herself and get by in a place where no-one speaks English and your only form of communication is the often vague translations provided in the lonely planet guides.

I'm beginning to dread telling her that the company has arranged for me to travel again, because the reaction I get is almost universally anger and resentment. I feel for her, but at the same time, I don't believe that I deserve that sort of reaction for doing my job.

Travel was exciting for the first 2 or 3 trips, overseas, but I see it more as a necessary evil, now days.